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Attorney Geoffrey Fieger On Death With Dignity: 'It Should Be Available Everywhere'

DETROIT (CBS DETROIT/SAN FRANCISCO) - The woman who became the face of the right-to-die movement has taken her own life.

Brittany Maynard, who had been suffering from a rare cancer and moved to Oregon because of the state's Death with Dignity Act took her own life Saturday, after posting a goodbye note on her Facebook page, People Magazine reported.

The right-to-die fight in Oregon began in Michigan more than 20 years ago.  Dr. Jack Kevorkian eventually went to prison for his physician-assisted suicides.  Attorney Geoffrey Fieger helped him fight that legal battle.  Speaking live on WWJ, Fieger says people who are terminally ill should be allowed to decide for themselves whether they want to continue suffering

"It has to do with personal freedom," said Fieger. "Most of the opposition that I have ever seen, and of course I've been involved in it since its initiation of it back in 1990, is religiously based, and I respect that religious belief, but I don't believe that someone's religious belief should control other people."

Fieger compared death with dignity to the humanity we show animals when we put them to sleep.

"If we don't have that freedom in America -- if we aren't free to make decisions about how much we have to suffer at the end of our lives without government or other people telling us - then we are not free. If we don't permit the same beneficence and kindness that we show to our animals - for ourselves - there is something wrong with us."

"Ron Aktins was very involved, as you may recall ... Janet Atkins - was Jack's (Kevorkian) first patient - he was charged with her murder  he was instrumental in getting Oregon and Washington to change their laws."

He says that terminally ill patients should and eventually will have the right to choose their own ending to their suffering, and expects that right will be afforded in all states at some point. Fieger said Michiganders shouldn't have to move out-of-state in order to have the right to die with dignity.

Maynard, who was a newlywed, was living in San Francisco at the time, learned she had terminal brain cancer last January after months of suffering from debilitating headaches. In April, UC San Francisco told her she had six months to live. Maynard has had her life-ending medication since shortly after that.

Earlier last month, Maynard released a YouTube video on her decision to move from her home state of California in order to access death with dignity laws in Oregon. The nonprofit Compassion & Choices is helping her chronicle her choice to die through a campaign to expand assisted suicide laws around the nation.

"The worst thing that could happen to me is that I wait too long. My most terrifying set of seizures was about a week or so ago," Maynard says in the video. "I remember looking at my husband's face at one point and thinking, 'I know this is my husband, but I can't say his name,' and ended up going to the hospital."

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